The newly taken images show an interstellar phenomenon flapping its ethereal wings in surprising detail. The spectacular display comes from a highly symmetrical gas nebula known as NGC 2899.
The image was captured as part of the Cosmic Gems program of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), for educational and public disclosure purposes.
Looking into deep space through ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers enjoyed the huge, glowing gas bubble, in an almost symmetrical, butterfly-like shape, 3,000 to 6,500 light-years away from Earth.
Although the nebula was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel in 1835, no one had ever seen it in such high resolution before.
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The butterfly’s wingspan reaches nearly 19 trillion km, or two light years. It’s also incredibly hot, as the hydrogen and oxygen that make up its ‘body’ heat up to around 10,000 degrees Celsius (twice as hot as the Sun) thanks to two stars at its center, believed to give it a symmetrical appearance. .
The NGC 2899 can only be seen from the southern hemisphere, and only through a powerful telescope, known as the Very Large Telescope, which is conveniently located in Chile.
Its four 8.2-meter telescopes have discovered numerous images of objects from deep space, such as the first known interstellar asteroid and the light of a source of gravitational waves, among others.
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